Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday takes the posting duties on location to Mexico for the first time ever. To commemorate my very first trip South of the Border, this week's hat is the 2018 "Música de Memphis" hat the Memphis Redbirds wore as part in the inaugural campaign of the Copa de la Diversion in 2018. Memphis only wore this cap for the first two seasons of the Copa campaign but I hope they bring it back in future years because it is such a fun color combination Looking closely at the tag under the sweatband shows that this cap was Made in U.S.A. and besides being a great thing in and of itself, it suggests it was worn during the first Copa season in 2018 because that was the last year New Era produced caps at its plant in Derby, NY I love the festive colors on the MILB batterman ( batterhombre ? bateadorehombre ??) patch here If you're a regular reader of the blog with a decently average memory you know that I was a resident of California during the years i

This week's National Day theme is of the three-day variety as we are about to embark upon Presidents' Day Weekend! To celebrate this much appreciated respite from the routine grind, I cherry-picked a Fredericksburg Nationals "George" alternate cap to celebrate the first President of the United States. I obtained this hat up from Hat Club in early 2021 and to me, this design is a fantastic way to tie American folklore into a baseball cap logo. I cannot tell a lie: I prefer caps that are made in the U.S.A. If there's ever a good time for a red, white and blue batterman, it's Presidents' Day One of the first things schoolchildren in the US are taught about George Washington is the Cherry Tree Myth and I only now  just learned from this article  that the whole story was fabricated so they could sell more books about the President. When students are learning about irony in later grades, this exact scenario should be highlighted as a key example. Well, back to

I was recently asked again if I had a favorite minor league cap and once more I was unable to field that seemingly simple question! To think it was only a year ago that I last discussed my struggle coming up with a definitive answer in my post on my  Carolina Pescados (Carolina Mudcats - Copa de la Diversion) cap . The hats mentioned in that post still rank highly up there in my view however I should have given a nod to the Nashville Sounds, especially the musically inspired logos Brandiose designed for the team's rebrand in 2015. This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is the Diamond Era cap from that set which I consider to be a true unsung hero of the collection. This cap was a wedding gift from a good friend of mine I met in college who grew up in Nashville and still lives in Music City today. Thanks again, Nate! I love how the soft nylon material on the inside of these caps serves as a guard against summer heat. I can imagine it must have been especially handy on some h

I’ll be back on my usual "National Day" celebrations for the next few posts and my focus this week is this 1973 Portland Mavericks retro from Ebbets Field Flannels in recognition of  National Wear Red Day , which is an annual campaign started by the American Heart Association to spread awareness about heart disease in women. I first learned about the Portland Mavericks in a 2014 documentary on Netflix called The Battered Bastards of Baseball . I highly recommend checking out the wild story of this historic ragtag bunch of misfits that played as an unaffiliated team in the Class A Northwest League from 1973-77. The stiff and low profile wool crown on some of the Ebbets retros for 1970s and 1980s designs are top notch for me. Even though the black sweatband might not be historically accurate, not seeing sweat stains makes the cap feel fresher overall. I realize this isn't an all red cap but the color is featured on the front panels enough to work well for National Wear Red

I’m taking a respite from the National Day themes for this post because there’s finally been some big news in the baseball world this week as David Ortiz was the only former player elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America–BBWWA for short which by the way, note the ridiculousness of the two B’s in the acronym–on this year’s 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. While congratulations are in order for Ortiz, these results mean Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Sammy Sosa have missed election for the 10th and final time and next year will be off the ballot. All four of those players deserve plaques in Cooperstown but the tribunal that comprises the BBWWA could not come to a reasonable consensus to recognize that. The Hall of Fame candidacies of these legends now lie in the hands of the “Today’s Game Committee” which looks to honor the players who dominated the game from 1988 through 2016. Luckily that time frame encompasses the years Bonds racked up his 14 All-Star Game appe

Fans of the regularly scheduled calendar-themed posts are getting a double dose this week as today is National Squirrel Day and National Hugging Day. It’s fortuitous that these holidays fall on a   Friday because a holiday to celebrate squirrels is the perfect moment for my Las Ardillas Voladoras de Richmond cap for this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday selection. If you’re still wondering where the hugging part comes in, ask yourself if there’s a creature out there that hugs trees more than the bushy-tailed rodents which comprise the squirrel family!   Richmond already has a zany logo so whoever had to make that amp-up squirrel even more wild for the Richmond Squirrels to wear as part of the “Copa de la Diversion” had quite the task ahead of them.   Luckily there was an in-house plan in place with Flying Squirrels’ Creative Services & Production Manager Nick Elder converting Nutzy into a masked luchador of lucha libre – a term which literally means “Freestyle” in Spanish – wrestling wh

Without MLB game results and general happenings to inspire my weekly write-ups, I typically look to "National Day" holidays and current events to guide me during these slow times. Luckily, there is no shortage of transactions occurring this time of year. As it turns out today's date, January 14, was an eventful one for the two teams I follow the most which are the San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees  in 2002 and 2001 , respectively. The big move San Francisco made on this date in 2002 was signing Barry Bonds to a 5 year $90 million contract extension. Getting his team to the World Series that year validated San Francisco's determination to do what ever it took to ensure Bonds was in a Giants uniform while shattering hitting records up throughout the remainder of his career. The Yankees have not make a splash on January 14 in the past 50 years however  their division rivals did in 2001 when the Toronto Blue Jays traded  David Wells–who was the Yankees 1998 ALCS M